Zombieland

Back in the day we ate a lot of brains. Stands to reason. All animals come with one, after all. And we certainly wouldn't leave behind such a great source of important fat. You don't think we just took the skinless boneless chicken breast and left the rest behind, did you? In fact, anthropologic data suggests that the opposite is true - we preferentially grabbed the fatty bits (marrow, organ meats, fatty meat), and that we would also seek to hunt for particular animals in season when they were fattiest. In fact if you were fastidious and ate only the lean meat, you might succumb to so-called "rabbit starvation," where you have plenty of protein but suffer from malnutrition and hunger. Humans cannot live on protein alone.

Have you seen the movie Zombieland? I highly recommend it if you are into a bit of gore and fun, and while the dietary advice isn't necessarily paleo, the exercise discussions take a functional fitness turn… (that last link is not entirely "safe for work," as they say, due to some foul language).

Zombies might be lacking in variety with their chosen food, but they certainly wouldn't be lacking in micronutrients and omega 3s! Brains are also an especially rich source of phospholipids, one of which, phosphatidylserine, was mentioned by a commenter on my other blog. She seems to have had luck with it helping her joint pain and fatigue. Terrific! But why?

Well, phospholipids are found in many foods, but the highest concentrations are in brains, seafood, and some organ meats. When one looks back at different hunter-gatherers roaming the world, they would tend to eat a lot of seafood, or they ate a lot of large land-roving mammals, or both. It would make sense that today we might have a lot less phospholipid intake compared to our evolutionary past. In fact, today's foods contain about 1/3 the amount of phospholipids they did even at the beginning of the 20th century (1).

Research in phospholipids was heating up in the 80s and 90s, but then a little illness came along called mad cow disease, and since the major source of phospholipids for supplements was cow brain, things slowed down for a while until an alternative soy source was found. Not surprisingly, the soy sourced supplement is somewhat different than the animal sourced one, but looks like from perusing pubmed that almost all the latest research was done with the soy version. If you are not fond of soy, krill oil combines omega 3 and phospholipids, and since krill (or the algae they eat) are the food for marine animals from which many ancient humans got their phospholipids, it would certainly be a more evolutionarily pedigreed source than soy. Not keen on krill or pills in general? Eggs and chicken and beef heart have tons of choline, the precursor of the phospholipid phosphatidylcholine.

Phospholipids are necessary to form cell membranes and to form the particles that carry cholesterol around in the blood stream. Who cares? Well, if we don't have enough of the precursors to make the phospholipids, the fat will get stuck in our livers, leading to the aptly named fatty liver. Lack of choline, for example, has been associated with both fatty liver and the development of diabetes. You might be interested to know that women eating the standard American diet have insufficient choline intake, and that the small percentage eating enough choline get it from eating an unusually high number of eggs.

But what does the research show about our brains and muscles? Do we suffer as human beings because we've greatly reduced our phospholipid intake, especially in the last century? Well, in sports performance studies, phospholipids can help reduce pain and speed up recovery. And supplementation can result in a statistically significant improvement in your golf shot (2). A study of memory and cognition in the elderly didn't show any improvement using the soy-derived versions (3), though other earlier studies showed positive effects. But the most intriguing part of the research is when you find out that ingestion of phospholipids has been found to reduce increases in ACTH and cortisol in response to stress (4). That is remarkable - it would imply that having plenty of phospholipids on board would diminish our total hormonal stress response, and decrease the damaging effects of chronic stress along the way. Effects that would include an increased vulnerability to depression, anxiety, diabetes, and heart disease.

I've always wondered why we modern humans are considered so "stressed." I mean, sure, we are probably way more stressed than the majority of our ancestors who worked obtaining food 17 hours a week and otherwise hung out and told stories and played games. But the most accepted pathophysiologic model for major depressive disorder and other mental illness is the stress diathesis model. Meaning stress combined with genetic vulnerability changes your brain and causes your symptoms. There's a lot of research support for this model and it makes a great deal of sense. BUT. Mental illness has been increasing over the 20th and 21st centuries, especially depression. Maurizio Fava MD said in a lecture it is increasing on the order of 10% in each generation since the 1950s. That is HUGE. We know this (in America at least) from epidemiological catchment studies (5) done since the beginning of the 20th century.

But are we really more and more stressed? In the first 50 years of the 20th century, there were two world wars. Millions of people died from flu epidemics, and when my mother was a child, there was still constant fear of polio. By the 60s we were worried about global nuclear annihilation. Sure, now I have to remember 40 different passwords and traffic is pretty rotten, and we worry about terrorism and natural disasters and relatives with chronic illness, and men and women are still fighting wars, but is that more stressful than what families faced in the last century? Ot the centuries before, also ridden with war, plague, and famine?

I don't think stress has changed so much, at least in recent history. Agricultural humans have always been unhealthy and stressed, and I don't see how increases in cardiovascular disease and mental illness over the past 100 years could be explained *strictly* by a stress (cortisol) model.

I contend (as many do) that the MAJOR change in the last 100 years has been our industrialized diets. Agriculture is one thing, and not good for human health (though it did beef up human fertility). But industrialization of the food supply, I believe, is the primary causative factor in our modern physical diseases and our modern decline in mental health.

And here we have a bit of evidence that may bring diet and stress together at last. Phospholipid supplementation, in a few studies, decreases our stress response, especially to emotional stress. Imagine day after day of munching on mammal brains or atlantic herring, rich in phospholipids, and thus (if one believes the research) having a blunted hormonal response to emotional and physical stressors, compared to our relatively phospholipid deficient diets of today. Modern disease pathology is all about the cortisol, as much as it is all about the insulin.

We are built for eating brains and/or seafood (or eggs). Ancestral migration patterns would seem to suggest that is the case. The farther we stray from achieving the micronutrient richness of our ancestral diets, the more we seem to suffer.

Hi, If you did'nt like eating some of the organ meats, would you still benefit from, and be able to uptake the phospholipids by making a broth or a stock using not just the bones but all the organ meats as well?

Dr. Deans, what a novel approach to presenting the benefits of foods resplendent with phospholipids, and of avoiding the pre-made concoctions in plastic packages.

Yes, the herring/mackerel/sardine treats, along with wild-caught Salmon are part of my food plan. Hard-boiled egg yolks and a pot of tea with lots of heavy cream in the creamer make a nice, quick meal. You have made a lovely, new definition for "happy meals".

Beef liver cooked in pastured butter and coconut oil, with beef bacon and chives, is another of those "happy meals".

Glad to see some emphasis on the importance of phospholipids in our diets which of course implies that 'whole animal' eating is very important for our health over the long term.

To the other commenters: by a large margin, the best sources of the kinds phospholipids we want more of are bone marrow and brain. Then shellfish. Then other seafood and eggs. Bone marrow is exceptionally easy - roast marrow bones, scoop out and swallow the soft marrow like a supplement if the texture isn't a preferred one. (it's not for me)

As first foods for infants, brain and marrow would seem to be ideal. Anecdotally speaking, this is apparently traditionally what infants were fed in Italy before the unfortunate practice of feeding cereal grains was popularized.

While I'm convinced of the importance of reducing my reliance of muscle meat in favor of an increase in offal (organs/glands), bone/cartilage broths and bone marrow, I still struggle with the actual practice. So far I've been able to reluctantly, swallow down a tbsp or so of bone marrow 3 or so times a week but so far, that's it. I'll get there though... and both my supplement budget (that PS-100 is pricey!) and my brain (the latter being more important) will be ever so grateful.

Thanks K! I saw Melissa M. made a post about roasting marrow bones, then whisking it up with some spices and maybe other oils or an incredible salad dressing that sounded really drool-worthy.

I was never raised eating organ meats, so what I tend to do is collect grass fed beef liver, or chicken hearts (which are also a good source of phospholipids), or whatever in the freezer, thaw it just enough to slice into little cubes (still frozen, but not rock hard), then refreeze in little baggies. Then when I make a soup or chili or something, the bits get thrown in and no one (me, kids, husband) is the wiser. I'm sure they just assume it's a chopped up mushroom or something.

Good suggestion. Looks like the Farmer's Market will be on the agenda today and soups/chili/stew will be added to the menu.

Inspired, I decided to have a look at amazon.

Looks like there are some interesting offal cookbooks:
The Fifth Quarter: An Offal Cookbook by Anissa Helou
The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson
Beyond Nose to Tail: More Omnivorous Recipes for the Adventurous Cook by Fergus Henderson
Primal Cuts: Cooking with America's Best Butchers Marissa Guggiana

and related:
Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore by Jennifer McLagan
Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient by Jennifer McLagan

We have no absolute need for carbohydrate (though it may be healthier to eat some, instead of making our liver convert it), and our absolute requirement for protein is relatively low...but it's becoming clear that many essential nutrients for proper human function are either animal fat-soluble, animal fat-derived, or animal fat itself.

Thank you for continuing to hammer home that mental health is dependent on physical health, which is dependent on a healthy diet. So many people don't understand this connection.

Your posts are so enlightening! As long as you're talking brains, would you please consider writing about butyrate and urocortins sometime? There's a lot of interesting stuff in animal models about the many kinds of beneficial functions they have, but I can't find much in the way of nutrition in humans about them.

Excellent article.....I've often wondered about the soy lecithin(yuck)I see added to foods and now I know the history.Another reason to avoid processed foods and stick with fish, meat and eggs(yum).
Thanks!
Geo

I think that more people are diagnosed with depression and anxiety now because there is more psychiatric care available, and diagnoses have changed. (Fewer people these days are diagnosed with hysteria, for example, than a hundred years ago.) But just because something is reported more frequently doesn't mean it occurs more frequently.

Another factor is that people sit behind computers more hours per days than ever before. They spend more time riding in horseless carriages and flying machines and correspondingly less time walking, washing clothes, and ploughing the fields. In short, people get less physical exercise, which probably increases the incidence of depression and anxiety.

As you alluded to, there are some health risks that have caused some societies to shun shellfish, swine, human brains, polar bear liver, and various other animal protein sources. The fish rots from the head down, you know.

Agree of course that mental health is more than diet. I am interested in how modern, nutrient-poor and poor and processed food rich diets make us more vulnerable to mental illness, allowing for genetics, temperament, stressors, epigenetics, etc, to make their own contribution. Dr. Fava made a point that increased diagnosis and attention has increased diagnosis of mental illness but that taking that into account statistically does not fully explain the explosion of modern mental health problems. And of course I don't advocate eating human brains or rotting fish.

Controlled trials and provided biological mechanisms can give us a sound basis for believing them. Emily only ever piles on the evidence and then lets our imagination run wild. Somebody needs to make these points and alert the masses. If getting more phosphatidylserine could potentially improve my life then there is no reason not to try it and do my own little n=1 experiment.

Also I think it's the shear amount of phosphatidylserine in brains and fish compared with muscle meats that is the issue. You can get vitamin c from eating brains but it's probably not going to meet your needs for optimal health.

I have been thinking about this post i made awhile ago, many times since i made it. I don't like making generalizations about things like mental health based on conjectures about diet (as may be clear from my previous post).

However, the fact of the matter is that in this case I actually may have some personal evidence on this subject.

I am old (60 years), overweight (technically obese i suspect), and on statins (simvastatin) since i had a heart attack in 1998. Basically i am doing fine, although i tend to sleep a lot these days.

But here is my so-called evidence. I make a certain kind of homemade sandwich for myself which is one of my favorite foods. I call it "T&E" because it is half tunafish salad and half egg salad mixed together. Normally i have some lettuce with it and bread of course.

It is worth mentioning that this favorite food of mine is out of the range of foods which my nutritionist recommends (HPHC). I believe that i only can eat this BECAUSE i am on simvastatin which is (more or less) keeping my cholesterol under control.